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Olga Lautman: Trump Sells Out Ukraine to Aid His Friend Putin

By dianeravitch
October 15, 2026 //
6

Trump has demonstrated again and again that laws mean nothing to him; alliances mean nothing to him. All that matters is his inflated ego and the chance to get richer.

A few days ago, he brazenly abandoned the brave Ukrainians who have battled the powerful Russian nation to a standstill.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the U.S. has passed stern laws sanctioning any country that does business with Russia. The first sanctions law passed in 2022, not long after Russia’s launching of the first ground was in Europecsince 1945.

The second law imposing sanctions on trade with Russia was passed only a month ago to honor the late Senator Lindsey Graham, who despised Putin and supported Ukraine. Trump now dishonors his good friend Lindsey Graham.

Trump ignored those laws when he announced his intention to buy diesel fuel from Russia. Ukraine and out European allies were shocked by Trump’s brazen reversal of U.S. policy. It’s no secret that Russia will receive billions of dollars from the US, which will help pay for its war against Ukraine. It will also help pay for Russian shipment of weapons to Iran.

Most puzzling is that Trump is getting only enough diesel fuel for a few weeks at most. The first shipment, “300,000 tons,” will satisfy our diesel needs for half a day. The shipment amounts to 2.5 million gallons. American consumption of diesel fuel is 4 million gallons daily.

He assumes he can hoodwink American farmers with his deal with Putin. This might help him in the midterm elections.

Olga Lautman, a Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), describes how quickly Trump switched sides:

Victoria Deineko holds her daughter Mia while standing in front of a multi-story residential building damaged in a Russian missile strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026. Evgeniy Maloletka/AP Photo

It is rare to see a country switch sides so dramatically during a war, but here we are, watching Trump abandon Ukraine as it fights for its survival and instead assist Russia. And as Russia continues bombing Ukrainian cities, homes, and hospitals, killing civilians, Ukrainian officials say they went two nights in a row without the advance warnings they normally receive from the United States before Russian ballistic missile attacks. During the latest wave of Russian attacks, six people were killed and approximately 600,000 Ukrainians were left without electricity.

As if that weren’t bad enough, reports began coming out of Ukraine overnight that Elon Musk’s SpaceX had suddenly restricted Ukraine’s military StarShield satellite service, leaving Ukrainian officials blindsided. StarShield operates under a contract with the U.S. Department of Defense, and the sudden 100-mile-per-hour speed limit imposed on military terminals disrupted Ukraine’s ability to intercept Russian drones, carry out reconnaissance, and maintain communications.

Ukrainian troops were also having problems staying connected even when moving below the new speed limit. Drone operators were losing live video feeds or having to slow their drones down, leaving them more vulnerable to Russian attacks. Ukraine’s 7th Air Assault Corps said several missions had to be canceled because of this. Ukrainian presidential adviser Serhii Beskrestnov confirmed the restrictions and said that he did not believe the timing was a coincidence, considering Trump’s recent threats against Ukraine. Musk later posted on X that StarShield is controlled by the U.S. government and that decisions about restrictions are made by the military and ultimately Trump. By Wednesday evening, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry reported that the connection was working better, although the speed limit had not been lifted.

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski was among the first to react as reports came out about the restrictions, taking aim at Musk. “Hey, big man, are you playing politics with your products again? As your European customers, we are watching you,” he wrote on X. Poland continues to help pay for Starlink services used by Ukraine since the full-scale invasion.

Sikorski is right to call this out publicly. Why would any country want to spend billions buying American weapons or depend on American technology if the U.S. can decide when and how it can be used? And this is yet another reason America’s allies are paying close attention to what is happening in Ukraine, wondering whether they could be next.

The restrictions come just days after Trump announced a deal with war criminal Putin to ease sanctions on Russian diesel and allow the U.S. to buy Russian fuel, giving Moscow another source of revenue to fund its brutal invasion. As Ukrainians were dealing with the sudden SpaceX restrictions, Putin’s bagman Kirill Dmitriev announced earlier today that the first contracts for Russian diesel sales to the U.S. could be signed within days. Speaking at Russian Energy Week, Dmitriev said that the U.S. and Russia were communicating almost every hour to work out the logistics of resuming shipments.

Trump’s decision to reopen Russian diesel sales has drawn opposition from some in Congress. Twelve U.S. senators, including six Republicans (just six), warned that the deal would provide Putin with more money to finance his invasion. Some lawmakers also questioned whether this deal violates U.S. sanctions laws.

And while Trump is making deals with Putin, he has also lashed out at Zelenskyy, demanded elections in Ukraine, and threatened to cut off intelligence and military assistance unless Kyiv stops striking Russian oil refineries. After two nights without the usual missile warnings and the sudden StarShield restrictions, Ukrainian officials have every reason to question whether they can still trust the United States.

It’s also interesting how Trump keeps demanding elections from Ukraine but has no such demands for Putin, who has ruled Russia for more than 25 years, while jailing and assassinating opponents. And the double standard doesn’t end there, because Russia continues bombing Ukraine’s power plants and other energy infrastructure, while Trump demands that Ukraine stop attacking Russian oil refineries.

This is all happening as Russia helps Iran target American forces and interests in the Middle East. According to recent U.S. intelligence assessments, Russia and China have been supplying Iran with satellite imagery for targeting and components for weapons. But Trump dismissed the reports, even though they came from his own intelligence agencies. In a Truth Social post, he called people raising concerns “Radical Left Morons and Lunatics,” claimed that any Russian or Chinese assistance was minimal, and added, “I don’t believe they are at all.” So Trump is dismissing his own intelligence agencies’ findings about Russia helping Iran while easing sanctions on Russian diesel and threatening to cut off intel sharing to Ukraine.

And the blame for what is happening does not stop with Trump. Republicans in Congress who have remained silent or defended his decisions bear full responsibility. There are a handful of Republicans who have objected to Trump’s fealty to Putin, but far too many others have either supported his treatment of Ukraine and his attacks on European allies or refused to challenge him. One man could not carry out such a dramatic reversal of American policy without the backing of his party, which has allowed him to continue making concessions to Russia even as Moscow threatens the security of European allies.

None of us should be surprised, of course. We have watched Trump worship Putin and defend Russia for more than a decade, even siding with Moscow over American intelligence agencies. But watching him ease sanctions on Russia, threaten to cut off military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine, and oversee new restrictions on StarShield while Russia continues bombing Ukrainian cities is infuriating. This is no longer just about Trump abandoning Ukraine or pressuring Zelenskyy into a peace deal. He has put the U.S. in the position of assisting and funding Russia’s genocidal war while actively undermining Ukraine’s ability to defend itself. Trump has picked a side, and it’s Russia.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Cruelty, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Funding, International, Trump

Melania Trump Threatens to Sue Blogger and Destroy Her

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2026 //
8

The blogger known as “JoJo from Jerz” has an incredible, frightening story to tell. She has a large following on social media, and she uses it to say what she thinks about Donald and Melania Trump. She doesn’t like them.

Not long ago, she got a letter from a government attorney threatening to sue her for defamation. This is, of course, an outrage because the First Amendment protects her right to criticize the President, his policies, and his very public wife.

But the threat was clear. A lawsuit would bankrupt her, cause her to lose her home, and ruin her life. The federal government has unlimited resources; it can destroy your life simply by engaging in litigation. At some point, the ordinary citizen runs out of money.

I learned about the situation while reading Dean Obeidallah’s post, where he gave the background and explained that JoJo is Joanne Carducci, a single mother of two children.

Dean wrote:

I wasn’t surprised to hear that Donald and Melania have been threatening lawsuits against Joanne Carducci—better known as JoJoFromJerz—in an effort to silence her criticism. Carducci has millions of followers between X, Facebook, Threads, Substack and more. But what the Trump crime family didn’t count on is the type of fighter JoJo is and how people would rally to support her!

I spoke to JoJo about her ordeal that she only went public with in her Substack post on September 26, 2026, titled, “Be Best. Be Quiet. Or Be Bankrupted.” It was jaw-dropping to read how the Trumps—apparently led by Melania—had their lawyers send letters to JoJo threatening to sue her for criticizing Donald and the so-called “First Lady.” (In Trump’s case, Melania is far from the first lady—she’s more like the 100th!)

Having read Dean’s introduction, I then opened JoJo’s September 26, 2026, post, where she described the nightmare of being threatened by the Trumps, but most especially by Melania.

Jojo wrote:

For the first half of this year, Melania Trump was doing everything in her power to get me to shut up.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk about this. I didn’t know how to talk about it. And if I’m being fucking honest, I’m scared to talk about it right now.

But I’m sick and tired of carrying it around, and I need to put it down.

And watching my fucking feed turn into a propaganda pageant for that self-anointed patron saint of women has exhausted whatever restraint I had left.

If you’ve followed me for a while, you know something was happening earlier this year. I was trying to keep doing my work while worrying about my children, our home, my livelihood, and whether telling you what was happening could cost us everything.

Here’s what I didn’t tell you.

The president and the first lady of the United States of America were threatening to sue me.

Me. A single mother of two in New Jersey.

At first, the letters were about things I’d said about both of them, although mostly her, but over the next several months it became entirely about Melania. She wanted me to retract what I’d said and apologize, and when I wouldn’t, another letter would come, another accusation of defamation, another demand for money I didn’t have, until this woman’s wounded feelings had become something I had to consider every time I thought about my family’s future.

A prominent attorney who wasn’t able to help me told me I should do everything they asked because otherwise they would ruin me.

They would take my home.

And I don’t know how to explain what those words do to you when you’ve already had to rebuild your life from scratch, when the home somebody is telling you to be afraid of losing is the place you made out of everything you managed to save of yourself. There wasn’t some other fortune underneath us. There was this house, my work, and two children who depended on me to make it enough.

I cried every day for months, but I kept going because I had to keep going, because I didn’t have a choice, because my kids need me and their lives don’t stop to indulge two petulant narcissists who can’t stomach being criticized. There’s still dinner and soccer and baseball and laundry and life—the life I’ve worked so hard to make ordinary for them. They get to have that. They get to need things and forget things and go on being children without having to make room for whatever the first lady thinks she’s entitled to take out of their mother.

And I never told them. They still don’t know.

I didn’t want to scare them, didn’t want to give them a reason to look around their own home and wonder whether they would get to keep it, so I kept it from them, even as this constant background noise ran underneath everything else: two of the most powerful people in the world, with all their money and lawyers and access to the levers of power, had targeted me. 

My livelihood. My family. The life I was right there in the middle of trying to live. And I couldn’t make the enormity of that fit with how ordinary we were, how little we had to spare, how much damage they could do without it costing them anything they would miss.

She was swinging a fucking wrecking ball at a mosquito, and my children lived in the building.

For months, I told only the people closest to me and some incredible, heroic human beings—elected officials, people you might recognize from television—who showed up when I needed help. I sat on the rest because I was scared, and I hate that for me, but I fucking hate it for my country, too. I was afraid to tell you what the president and first lady were doing because I didn’t know what telling you might make them do next.

She never had to set foot in our house to make her presence felt in every room.

That’s the brutal, grotesque, fucking disgraceful truth.

And let’s be clear about what I do: I have never intentionally lied about her. When I’m talking about what these people say and do, I’m working from my understanding of the truth, what I can see with my own eyes and hear with my own ears. But a hell of a lot of my work is mockery and ridicule, because I’m a satirist and they’re public figures, and I have a right to point at the ridiculous fucking spectacle they’re making of this country and laugh.

They don’t have to like it. That couture-clad, cash-cushioned control freak was trying to turn free speech into a luxury item and price me out of my own fucking voice.

I don’t need to make shit up. With these two, the problem has never been a shortage of material.

Matt Platkin, New Jersey’s former attorney general, helped me for free, spending hours on the phone with me, giving his time and expertise at considerable personal cost, shepherding me through something I could never have begun to navigate alone. And he listened to me. He advised, explained, helped me understand what I was facing, but the decisions stayed mine. I still cry when I think about the sheer luck of somebody that good showing up in the middle of something that ugly, when I needed help I couldn’t afford and didn’t know how to find.

He’s an extraordinary fucking human being, and I owe him in ways I’ll never be able to adequately express, let alone repay.

Having him beside me felt like somebody putting a hand beneath a box I’d been holding so long my arms had started to shake. I still had to decide where to go with it, but I could finally take a breath without being afraid I’d drop everything. I kept returning to Timothy Snyder’s first lesson in On Tyranny: “Do not obey in advance.”

This is the beginning of her post. Please open and read it all.

It shows how thin-skinned the Trumps are, how ruthless they are, and what true courage looks like.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Courage, Cruelty, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Grit, Injustice, Trump

Trump Makes a Deal with Putin That Betrays Ukraine, the U.S., and Our Allies

By dianeravitch
October 12, 2026 //
12

When Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, western nations imposed sanctions on Russia in an effort to persuade him to stop the war through economic pressure. Despite sanctions, Russia has managed to continue its oil exports, using a “shadow fleet” of unmarked tankers. In recent months, Ukraine has been hitting Russian oil storage facilities and oil refineries in hopes of suppressing Russia’s oil revenues. Those oil revenues fund Russia’s war.

Day after day, Russia has relentlessly sent missiles to bombard civilian targets in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, killing men, women, and children. Without the American Patriot missile systems, Ukraine is almost defenseless.

Trump sent his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his friend Steve Witkoff to talk to Putin about negotiating a peace deal. They left the meeting wreathed in smiles, saying it was a day they would never forget. But they weren’t negotiating a ceasefire or an end to the war. They were negotiating a partnership with Putin to get Russian oil to the U.S. before the midterm elections.

Barely a month ago, Congress passed the Lindsey Graham Russian Sanctions Act, which gave Trump the power to impose 100% tariffs on any nation buying Russian oil.

Guess who is buying Russian oil? The United States! Trump will have to tariff his own country. The members of Congress who passed the Russian Sanctions Act must feel very foolish indeed.

Trump announced triumphantly that Russia would sell the (no longer sanctioned) Russian oil in order to lower prices of diesel in the U.S.

Senator Thom Tillis (NC) said on national television that Trump may be breaking a law passed in 2022. Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Tillis said the 2022 law banned oil imports from Russia unless all Russian troops were out of Ukraine.

Trump announced the Russian oil shipments as “tons,” not gallons. The U.S. consumes about 4 million gallons of diesel daily. The first release of Russian diesel (300,000 tons) is about 2.2 million gallons, or a half day of diesel consumption in the U.S. Even the larger amounts that Trump has announced would not last long, a matter of days, maybe weeks.

The closure of the waterways that transit oil from the Middle East is the fundamental problem, a problem of Trump’s making.

Having called on Zelensky to stop bombing Russian oil targets, he added that Zelensky should step down as president of Ukraine because he refused to stop bombing Russian oil targets. Zelensky’s response was to bomb another Russian oil facility.

Trump reacted by saying he would stop negotiating a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. When he campaigned in 2024, he claimed he would get a peace deal in one day. It’s almost two years later, and he has no deal. He makes demands only on Ukraine, never Russia.

Trump blamed Zelensky for the high price of oil in the U.S., sidestepping his own responsibility for shutting down the global oil supply when Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz after Trump ordered his war on Iran.

Russia comes out ahead. Trump is either a fool or a traitor.

Putin must be laughing. In addition to being free of sanctions on its sale of oil, Russia is supplying Iran with weapons to kill Americans.

It’s a win-win for Putin.

But not for the U.S.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Ethics, Extremism, International, Trump

Florida Wants to Be First State to Repeal All Vaccine Mandates

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2026 //
2

Florida is one crazy state. Its state leaders interfere in every aspect of people’s lives. Under the leadership of Governor Ron DeSantis, it passed a rigid abortion ban, denying every woman in the state the right to control her body and her life choices.

DeSantis has led a campaign to destroy the state’s public schools, so the state now spends billions yearly to subsidize charter schools, unaccountable voucher schools, and home schooling. Most of the voucher schools are religious schools with uncertified teachers.

As his Surgeon General, DeSantis chose a doctor with extremist views against vaccines. Parents can still get their children vaccinated, but they will be in school with unvaccinated children.

Dr. Joseph Ladapo’s goal is to eliminate all vaccine requirements.

CBS News reported:

TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Department of Health is moving forward with its push to remove the requirement for four vaccines for children entering schools, but has dropped its attempt to expand exemptions for the immunization requirements.

In August, the DOH struck the words “sincerely held moral or ethical belief” from a proposed rule change that would have allowed parents to opt not to get their children vaccinated for various diseases, which are normally required to attend K-12 public schools. The exemptions currently in place must be based on religious tenets and practices.

Meanwhile, the DOH also announced a public meeting next Thursday in Lake Mary to discuss repealing the requirement of four vaccines from entry requirements for PreK-12 public and private schools.

Immunizations for Hepatitis B, varicella (chicken pox), Haemophilus influenza type b (Hib) and pneumococcal conjugate would no longer be required to attend Florida schools under the proposal. The move has been in play for over a year after Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced his intent to get rid of all vaccine mandates in the state.

The immunization requirements considered for repeal by DOH are an agency rule, not in state law, and can be repealed by the agency itself.
The Florida chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics said in a statement they “remain concerned,” about the state’s move to weaken the state’s vaccination mandates.

“Florida’s pediatricians will continue to make their voices heard in opposition to this proposed rule that would undermine the health of Florida’s children and communities,” the statement reads. “When school vaccine protections are eliminated, immunization rates decrease, leaving more people, including those too young or medically unable to be vaccinated themselves, vulnerable to contracting these dangerous illnesses.”

In a comment submitted by FCAAP in opposition to the proposed rule, the advocacy group estimated the repeal of vaccination requirements in Florida would result in a reduction of the state’s GDP by $74 million in the first year and nearly $9 billion over a decade.

Attempts to repeal all vaccine mandates in the state began over a year ago when Gov. Ron DeSantis and Ladapo called on the Legislature to change state law. Legislative action is needed to remove the requirements for the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, polio, diphtheria, rubeola and tetanus vaccines.

But even though the move to repeal all vaccine mandates was supported by DeSantis, First Lady Casey DeSantis and then-Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas, no legislator filed a bill in any of the multiple legislative sessions in 2026.

Multiple attempts at a “Medical Freedom” bill that would have expanded vaccine exemptions and mandated doctors to provide an alternate vaccine schedule passed the state Senate but failed to pass the state House.

Categories DeSantis, Ethics, Extremism, Florida, Health, Medicine, Science

Robert Reich: A Dystopian Nightmare, with Hegseth in Charge

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2026 //
19

Robert Reich invites readers to imagine a war fought by AI-powered robots. What could possibly go wrong? Bill Gates warned a few days ago that AI could go rogue and kill one billion people..give or take a few thousand. Imagine this cyber war controlled by men who are not celebrated for their humanity, but for their yearning to amass power.

Get out and vote.

Reich warns:

Imagine four of the most frighteningly irresponsible people in America deciding how AI will be put to use in the most frighteningly irresponsible way. 

Pete Hegseth is one of them. Trump is another. The other two are Elon Musk and Newt Gingrich. 

Hegseth says he’s tasking Musk and Gingrich with laying the groundwork for a new “Autonomous Warfare Command,” or AutoWarCom — a new Pentagon command operation for autonomous warfare. It would feature unmanned drones, autonomous sensors, unmanned boats, and other autonomous systems. Hegseth is proposing to triple spending on autonomous warfare to $74 billion. 

Hegseth has also named as an adviser Palmer Luckey, a major Trump donor who designed the Oculus Rift, a virtually reality headset credited with reviving the virtual reality industry, and co-founded of Anduril Industires, a military tech company focused on autonomous drones and sensors. 

The specter of autonomous lethal weapons — weapons that kill without human beings first deciding who, how, or when — is the nightmare of many who deal with AI. Autonomous AI weapons are fraught with unpredictability. And what happens when AI weapons escape their controls and go rogue, as recently occurred at OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Google? 

Bad enough that Hegseth and Trump are pouring money into this. Worse that they’re setting up a separate military command for it. Worse still that they’re depending on Musk, Gingrich, and a virtual-reality game designer to tell them how. 

I keep thinking I’ll wake up from this nightmare into a sane world.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Evil, Extremism, Insane, Trump

Come to Hear a Brilliant Analysis of Trump’s War on DEI!

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2026 //
5

Come to Wellesley College to hear Dr. Yohuru Williams dissect and eviscerate the Trump administration’s attack on “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

Such policies are meant to broaden opportunity. They take us closer to our professed goals of liberty and justice for all. Yet the Trump administration wants to abolish them. Civil rights protections have already been reversed, so that any effort to help students of color is treated as a violation of this administration’s hostility to DEI.

Yohuru Williams is a leading scholar and public intellectual who has often appeared on public television to expound on African American history. He is Distinguished University Chair and Professor of History and Founding Director of the Racial Justice Initiative at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. He is a wonderful speaker.

Join me on October 6 at Wellesley College.

Open to all. Free.

Yohuru Williams is speaking as part of the annual lecture series that I established several years ago.

The event will be live-streamed and available later online.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Democracy, Education Reform, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Racism, Trump

What Will the New Federal Voucher Program Mean for Public Schools?

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2026 //
0

In January 2027, the federal government will launch a new voucher program. It’s available to states if the Governor opted to participate. The program was part of what Trump called his “One Big Beautiful Bill,” but which critics called “One Big Ugly Bill,” because it locked in big tax cuts for the wealthiest while cutting benefits for middle-class and poor Americans.

At the recent conference of the Network for Public Education, our board met to discuss whether we would support resistance or collaboration. Although we understand that some schools want to capture any money they can to support their students, we decided to stand strongly for the principle: PUBLIC DOLLARS FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS. AND ONLY PUBLIC SCHOOLS. we concluded that if public schools accept vouchers, it will normalize the ideas embedded in the program, that is, that education is a consumer good. We believe it is a civic responsibility.

Leigh Dingerson’s description of this new program was published by In the Public Interest, which reports about the privatization of everything.

Public schools may participate in the program, but only for programs and activities that they do not already provide, like after-school tutoring, transportation, and field trips.

Leigh Dingerson wrote:

The idea that government has an inherent interest in providing a free, public education for every child used to be sacrosanct, except among a small set of radical reformers like Milton Friedman. But a 40-year campaign for “school choice” has quietly gathered steam. Proponents of privatization are now openly acknowledging that their sights are set on eliminating public schools. They want to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education (founded to ensure the civil rights of children in schools) and offer no-strings-attached public dollars to private and religious schools. And now, a lawsuit filed in Nebraska just this month argues that the U.S. system of public schools violates the First Amendment and asks the state to declare public schools unconstitutional.

The first nationwide, federally funded school voucher program is set to begin in January, but it has already become a political football in both red and blue states. Governors are being pressured to allow vouchers to be handed out in their states, and deep-pocketed special interests like the Heritage Foundation and large faith-based networks are spending tens of millions of dollars to build the infrastructure to funnel federal funds into private and religious schools.

There is much we don’t yet know about the program, including the mechanism to collect and dole out the money via Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs). Regulations are being developed by the Department of the Treasury and are expected within weeks. But we do know this: States are not obligated to participate in this program. In fact, governors or other designated agencies must decide annually whether to allow federally funded vouchers to be handed out in their states.  

What Can Be Done?

The implications of almost-universal private school vouchers are enormous. The federal tax credit voucher program signals a massive shift towards a privatized, market-based system with few if any guardrails to serve our most vulnerable students, ensure equity, rein in discrimination, or address educational quality.

What can state advocates and policymakers do?

Encourage your governor to opt out of the program.

  • The governors of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Oregon have publicly announced their intention to decline to participate in the voucher program. Remember that the decision to participate or opt out of participation in the program must be made Governors may simply wait a year to see how the program plays out.

Consider legislation to narrow or guide your state’s participation.

  • Vermont has enacted a law that establishes criteria under which the state will participate in the program. It includes that SGOs have a “core mission of providing educational opportunities to economically underprivileged students” and that neither the SGO nor any school that receives funding under the program may “discriminate against any student” in a variety of categories. It also requires each SGO to report annually to the House and Senate Committees on Education, including data on the use of the voucher funds and the individuals receiving them.
  • In Rhode Island, the legislature has passed legislation which requires that both the legislature and the governor must jointly approve any decision to opt in to the program.

Watch for efforts to commit state funding to corporate entities vying to help administer the program.

  • A number of corporate entities have been created to “facilitate” and profit from the implementation of this program. For example, in Florida the legislature recently earmarked $2 million in its budget, apparently to contract with LearningSpring, a Denver-based start-up affiliated with the Koch network, to offer an online platform to help administer the federal voucher program.

Understand where your state might have authority to protect public education and ensure the integrity of taxpayer spending in the private market.

  • Familiarize yourself with your state’s private school (and homeschool) regulations and consider legislative language to strengthen them, and understand any state requirements for registered nonprofit organizations and whether they place any restrictions on, or allow oversight of, Scholarship Granting Organizations.

 What’s the matter with vouchers? The research is clear.

School vouchers are not new. We have half-a-century of experience with vouchers. Education Law Center’s Public Funds for Public Schools Project documents the many additional and important down-sides to vouchers. Among them:

 As students return to schools this fall, some have noted that this may be “the last normal year” for American schools.  It’s important for advocates of public education to make sure this critical institution doesn’t crumble.

Leigh Dingerson
Senior Research Fellow

Additional Resources

The following organizations offer additional resources on vouchers and the federal voucher program:

Education Law Center
Public Funds for Public Schools project.
The National Coalition for Public Education
The Network for Public Education

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Privatization, Religion, Resistance, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers

Robert Hubbell: Republicans Are Out of Touch with the Past and the Future

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2026 //
10

Robert Hubbell is a steady and wise blogger who has a knack for interpreting events as they happen. While Heather Cox Richardson looks at the day’s events from a historical perspective; Hubbell has a keen perspective honed by age and experience.

At a time when the public is skeptical, even fearful, of artificial intelligence, Trump has embraced this powerful technology with fervor, reassuring the tech titans that the federal government won’t regulate them but will trust them to regulate themselves. Simultaneously, Bill Gates was worrying in public that AI had the potential to wipe out a billion people. This is a “don’t worry, be happy” moment for Trump and his circle. They Pooh-pooh the growing number of people who worry about what big data centers will do to their water supply, their electricity bills, their jobs, their lives. Trump doesn’t get it.

Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans have chosen to use the weeks before the mid-term elections rehashing the investigation of Trump’s efforts to overturn his electoral loss in 2024. They have chosen this moment to prosecute Jack Smith, who led the investigation of Trump. In their attempt to prove that Trump was unjustly targeted, they are successfully rekindling bad memories of January 6, 2021, when Trump summoned a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol. Five years later, is this a winning hand for them. Hubbell thinks not.

He wrote about yesterday’s events;

Tuesday was a wild news day, but the throughline is this: Republicans are missing this moment in America, only five weeks before the midterms. They are clutching to the transitory retrograde spasm that propelled Trump to the presidency for all it is worth. They have no platform, no values, no principles, and no vision, so they cling tightly to the culture wars they exploited for a decade. But Americans have moved on to new issues, including the threat of uncontrolled artificial intelligence, the growing economic chasm between the haves and have-nots, the crushing burden of medical debt, the unaffordability of higher education, and the imploding economy for those who work for a living.

As the electorate recoils in disgust and fear over the coming onslaught at the hands of AI, Trump posed with nineteen AI oligarchs at the White House (eighteen of whom are men). At that meeting, Trump surrendered control of AI’s future to the handful of billionaires who will most benefit from the reckless development of a technology that will put millions of Americans out of work while polluting their communities and driving up electricity costs. Talk about a lack of self-awareness. See CNN Politics, Trump’s blasé attitude toward AI risks backfiring politically.

Per CNN,

Trump’s answer to voters who worry that AI will take their jobs, or who look askance at data centers’ enormous strains on electrical grids and water supplies, is an optimistic promise that such installations are “going to be very popular” and will make everyone rich.

He’s causing himself an immediate political problem. Some 75% of Americans view the growth of AI with fear and concern, according to a CNN/SSRS poll last week, and 71% want the federal government to do more to regulate it. Higher electricity bills attributed to the immense proliferation of data centers are deepening affordability frustrations among voters — a top midterm election issue.

So, at a time when more than 70% of Americans fear AI and want the government to regulate it,Trump entered into a deal that handed control of AI to the men most likely to profit from its unregulated development. See NBC News, After summit with tech titans, Trump calls for ‘self-regulation’ by AI companies.

When in the history of the world has “self-regulation” by monopolists ever inured to the benefit of the people—as opposed to the generational wealth of the monopolists?

At the luncheon, Trump and the AI oligarchs signed a “White House Accord on Super Intelligence,” Trump’s rebranding of “artificial intelligence.” The term “super intelligence” is insulting to humans. “Artificial intelligence” correctly signals that the technology is a probabilistic prediction model about which words follow other words. Calling it “super intelligence” signals that it is superior to human intelligence—which it is not and never will be. But Trump sees a profit opportunity in convincing people that they are inferior to AI, so he chose the moment five weeks before the midterms to align himself with the AI oligarchs and their dangerous vision of the future.

The “Accord on Super Intelligence” (which has not been made public—another worrisome sign) allegedly commits the AI tech companies to “building robust internal controls and detecting if there are any issues with the technology, coupled with multiple layers of auditing and controls, starting with internal risk review.” See The Guardian, Trump announces vague ‘morally binding’ AI deal among tech CEOs for ‘tremendous self-policing’.

You have got to be kidding, right?

If the AI tech companies are not already “building robust controls” and “detecting issues with the technology” and submitting it to “multiple layers of auditing and risk review,” then those tech companies should be shut down immediately. And if they are already employing those practices, then Trump got nothing in exchange for his agreement to let the AI oligarchs regulate themselves.

But the larger point is that hosting an AI oligarchs’ lovefest at the White House was Trump’s strategy for stopping his freefall in the polls. It was a monumentally stupid idea that was improbably exceeded in its stupidity by Senate Republicans who thought that the best way to distract from inflation, the Iran war, and existential fear of AI was to remind voters that Trump mounted an insurrection in 2021. They did so by bringing former special counsel Jack Smith to the Senate for a hearing.

For the third time, Jack Smith gave a commanding performance, reminding congressional Republicans that he had developed evidence that proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump conspired to obstruct the congressional count of electoral votes and unlawfully took national defense documents when he left office. See PBS, WATCH: Jack Smith says he would prosecute Trump again for ‘serious crimes against our nation’.

Apart from the gross error of believing the American people are focused on Jack Smith’s investigation of Trump’s crimes instead of the war, inflation, and the AI threat, GOP Senator Eric Schmitt’s questioning of Jack Smith turned into a debacle for the ages. Senator Schmitt believed he could prove that Jack Smith attended an NBA Atlanta Hawks game in February 2024 to surreptitiously conspire with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

After Jack Smith said he did not attend the game, Senator Schmitt smirked and accused Smith of perjury. Senator Schmitt concluded by calling Jack Smith a “dirt bag.”

When Jack Smith was handed a copy of the texts that allegedly placed him at a men’s professional basketball game featuring the NBA Atlanta Hawks, he said he could explain.

Instead of being at the Atlanta Hawks men’s professional basketball game, Jack Smith was at a women’s college basketball game between Maryland and Iowa. The University of Iowa’s sports teams are known as “the Hawkeyes” (not the Hawks). See C-SPAN, Sen. Schmitt confuses Hawks and Hawkeyes While Accusing Jack Smith of Perjury. The C-SPAN clip is 7 minutes long and contains the gist of the exchange.

Right-wing media was prepared for Senator Schmitt’s planned perjury trap—which failed in a spectacular fashion when it turned out that Senator Schmitt did not know the difference between the NBA Atlanta Hawks and the Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball team. 

Several right-wing podcasters and commentators released canned statements saying that Schmitt had trapped Jack Smith in perjury but they later deleted those statements when they realized that Senator Schmitt had committed a face-plant for the ages. See Rolling Stone, Eric Schmitt Gaffe in Jack Smith Hearing Covered as Win by MAGA Media. (“Johnson deleted his post later on Tuesday, after it had been up for hours with a community correction. Sean Hannity also picked up and ran with Schmitt’s story, but deleted his post highlighting the moment soon after.”)

But the more significant point is that Senator Schmitt’s planned perjury trap for Jack Smith was intended as his stealth launch as a vice-presidential candidate in JD Vance’s 2028 presidential campaign. Hours before the Senate hearing, someone planted a story with the ever-obliging Axios that there was “buzz” that Senator Schmitt might be JD Vance’s running mate. See Axios, Sen. Eric Schmitt is drawing buzz as a possible Vance VP in 2028.

Axios reporter Jim VandeHei wrote, “We hear the VP views Schmitt, 51, as trustworthy, intelligent, articulate, and a deft political operator.”

The Axios story was obviously planted by JD Vance or Eric Schmitt. It aged badly in four hours.

More to the point, if JD Vance thinks Eric Schmitt is a good VP candidate, it confirms that Republicans are more out of touch than imagined. Vance exudes arrogance and creepiness— “anti-charisma.” Eric Schmitt would add sneering smugness with a dollop of white nationalism to the ticket. 

The fact that anyone thought to float a trial balloon of Eric Schmitt as a VP candidate shows that the next generation of Republican leaders are missing the moment and failing to anticipate the future direction of the American electorate.

Other examples abound. The backlash against the implementation of Trump’s mass deportation policy has been severe. Rather than deporting the “worst of the worst,” Trump has effectively kidnapped law-abiding, productive members of American society and deported them to troubled countries with which the deportees have no connection. So, for example, the US has agreements to deport people seized in the US to (among others) Liberia, Ghana, Cameroon, Eswatini, Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, South Sudan, the DRC, and the Central African Republic. See Refugees International, Banished by Bargain: Third Country Deportation Watch (2026)

In the face of the backlash, the Trump administration is doubling down on its policy of renditions to third-party countries. On Tuesday, the US Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to continue its policy of deporting immigrants to third-party countries, at least for now. See Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration’s Third-Country Deportations, for Now.

Even if deportations are warranted and lawful, sending deportees to third countries with which they have no connection (and are often violence-prone) is cruel and inhumane. Trump and Stephen Miller appear to derive perverse pleasure from inflicting suffering on immigrants seeking asylum in the US.

And in a development that seems designed to ensure Ken Paxton’s defeat in his senatorial race against James Talarico, federal prosecutors in Texas have charged the Venezuelan DoorDash driver shot in the back by ICE agents with assault. See Man Shot by ICE Agent in Austin Is Charged With Assault – The New York Times

A similar story is playing out in education. On Monday, the Department of Education announced that it was officially removing a Biden administration rule that added LGBTQ protections to Title IX. See Education Week, Ed. Dept. Officially Kills Biden Rule That Added LGBTQ+ Protections to Title IX.

The Trump administration exhibits animus toward LGBTQ+ people in general, and toward transgender people in particular. Although the administration often justifies that animus on the grounds of preventing transgender people from participating in women’s sports, the repeal of the Biden-era rule is an attack on women who are victims of sexual assault on college campuses. As explained in the Education Week article,

The 2020 rules [imposed by Trump] notably had added more due-process protections for students accused of sexual harassment, an issue especially salient at the college level. . . . [¶]

The National Women’s Law Center warned the department’s move “significantly weakens protections against sexual harassment in education.” It pointed to a case of alleged sexual assault of a woman by fraternity members at Cornell University that has been in the news. A state prosecutor has reopened the investigation of the 2024 incident, which Cornell said in a statement that it supports notwithstanding its own Title IX investigation that resulted in a range of sanctions for the accused students.

In other words, at the very moment of national outrage over Cornell’s investigation and punishment of male students accused of a gang rape in 2022, the Trump administration is making it more difficult for victims of sexual assault to hold their attackers accountable. See Human Rights Campaign, You Get No Say: Trump Administration Abandons Rule Protecting LGBTQ+ Kids and Survivors of Sexual Assault in School Settings, Denying Public Any Chance to Weigh In.

As I said in the introduction, Republicans simply do not understand the cross-currents of change that are sweeping the country. Instead, they are running a playbook that ignores the fact that their standard-bearer has become everything that he ran against in 2016.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Democracy, Deregulation, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Politics, Technology, Trump

Did Netanyahu Know about the October 7 Attack Before It Happened?

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2026 //
34

For as long as I can remember, I have been a strong supporter of Israel. I was ten years old when the state was created as a refuge for the Jewish people, for those who survived the European genocide and for those who were fleeing persecution in Muslim countries across the Middle East. 

In Sunday School every week, we children brought pennies, nickels, and dimes to fill up little blue tin cans marked “For Palestine.” 

We celebrated the creation of the state of Israel and its triumph when it was attacked by all the neighboring Arab states. And we celebrated every other attempt to extinguish the only Jewish state in the world, the only safe haven for Jews. 

But my unwavering faith in Israel has been shattered by Benjamin Netanyahu and his ruthless response to the horrific events of October 7, 2023. 

His brutal campaign of violence in Gaza has not only killed tens of thousands of civilians but has made Gaza an uninhabitable wasteland. 

Almost as awful is his refusal to stop the violent attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians living on the West Bank. The Israeli Defense Forces have failed to intervene as rabid settlers torch the homes of Palestinians and murder them. 

Netanyahu is directly responsible for murder, aggression, and brutality. Instead of seeking peace, he is continuing the inhumane treatment of Palestinians and indulging the extremist settlers who want to seize more and more of the West Bank. 

Netanyahu justifies whatever he does or condones because of the Hamas attack on October 7. 

But there is a disturbing picture emerging about that day, stongly suggesting that Netanyahu was warned about October 7 and failed to take action. Did he decide not to protect the people who lived near the border with Gaza? If he did, he is an accessory to their deaths.

Like many other people, I was appalled by the savagery of October 7. I was obsessed by the accounts of the attacks on young people dancing until dawn at “the Rave.” They were hunted down and slaughtered like animals. They were killed as they hid, as they attempted to flee. Families in the Kibbutzim near the border were mercilessly murdered, even the children. Some 251 hostages were brutally kidnapped and taken to Gaza.  

Immediately after that day’s horrifying events, I subscribed to the English-language version of Ha’aretz to learn what was happening from an Israeli perspective. Ha’aretz is a a liberal, anti-Netanyahu publication. Soon after the October 7 massacre, a disturbing story appeared. The story said that trained observers at a military monitoring post called Nahal Oz, near the Gaza-Israeli border, had repeatedly informed their superiors about what they saw every day on the other side of the fence in Gaza. To them, it appeared that Hamas was preparing for an incursion. 

The monitors were identified as Combat Intelligence Collection Unit 414. Unit 414 consisted of 25 unarmed young women, trained to watch the border for signs of trouble.

They saw men conducting military exercises, studying maps and the terrain, practicing attacks near the fence, digging positions. All of it looked ominous to them but Israeli intelligence decided that these activities were not hostile. They were nothing more than training exercises. 

Unit 414’s many warnings were ignored. On October 7, Unit 414 was defenseless. At least 15 of the young women were murdered, and seven were taken hostage. 

Since that fateful day, we have learned that other nations warned Israel that Hamas was planning an attack. 

CNN reported that Netanyahu was warned that Hamas was planning an attack, but did not pinpoint the date it would happen. 

Two days after the massacre, The Times of Israel reported that Egyptian intelligence warned Israel that Hamas was planning a major attack. “Mounting questions over Israel’s massive intelligence failure to anticipate and prepare for a surprise Hamas assault were compounded Monday when an Egyptian intelligence official said that Jerusalem had ignored repeated warnings that the Gaza-based terror group was planning “something big” — which included an apparent direct notice from Cairo’s intelligence minister to the prime minister.” 

The story appeared recently in The Atlantic magazine, which reported that the chief of Egyptian intelligence flew to Israel on September 26, 2023, to warn Netanyahu of Hamas’ plans.

In September 2026, the Associated Press reported that Netanyahu was warned by the United Arab Emirates that an attack was imminent.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was directly warned by the president of the United Arab Emirates that Hamas was planning a major offensive just days before the militant group attacked on Oct. 7, 2023, according to an Israeli newspaper report.

UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed spoke with Netanyahu 10 days before the attack and said Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza at the time, was planning an operation, the Haaretz daily said. 

Bin Zayed said it would lead to bloodshed and could destabilize the region and undermine the Abraham Accords, the normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab and Muslim-majority nations, the newspaper reported.

But Netanyahu “reacted with relative calm,” according to Haaretz, which said he assured bin Zayed that Israel was prepared for any scenario and a possible attack was more likely to come from the occupied West Bank.

Netanyahu denied the story. He denied all the stories. He knew nothing. Yet the border of Gaza was not reinforced. Netanyahu shifted troops to the West Bank. Did he really know nothing? 

Put the pieces together. Netanyahu had multiple warnings about a major attack. He did not bolster the military presence. He did not tell the organizers of “the Rave” to move their dance to a safer location. He did not warn the settlers to evacuate. 

He continues to use his narrative about October 7 to bomb and destroy what’s left of Gaza and to allow West Bank settlers to harass and attack Palestinians in their homes and to steal their property.. 

The Israeli elections will be held on October 27. Netanyahu must be ousted.  There should be a thorough public investigation of what he knew and when he knew it. In addition to the deaths that he is directly responsible for, he has made Israel a pariah nation. He should be held accountable for his crimes. Israel has a heavy burden to bear for the crimes he committed in Israel’s name. The good people, the generous people, the open-hearted Israelis must act to restore the Israel that so many of us once revered. 

PS: As Americans, we should be able to sympathize with Israel’s dilemma. We have an authoritarian President who ignores the Constitution, norms, and laws to show his power. He has killed countless Iranians in a pointless war. He has murdered scores of men on the high seas, claiming they were carrying drugs but offering no evidence. He shut down USAID, which supplies food and medicine to the neediest in the world; this caused the deaths of many thousands of children in sub-Saharan Africa. He repeatedly tells the world that our elections–the centerpiece of our democracy–are rigged (is that a confession?) He has unleashed ICE to terrorize immigrants, some of whom have papers, and to kill people who committed no crime.

Will we ever reclaim our reputation as a nation of laws? Will Israel?

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Cruelty, Extremism, International

Heather Cox Richardson: Trump’s Cruel, Reckless Fantasy World

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2026 //
3

As the midterm elections get nearer, Trump grows ever more desperate in his attempt to prove that he is hugely popular, that the media are liars, and that elections are fraudulent.

We have never seen anything like this. Other candidates, other presidents have faced midterm elections without falling into a pit of craziness and desperation and fraud.

Read what Heather Cox Richardson reports:

After a hearing yesterday about Trump’s Friday ban of CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House campus, very early this morning—I was still awake writing yesterday’s letter—U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly granted the request of the media outlets to stop Trump’s order banning members of their organizations from the White House complex.

Kelly, whom Trump appointed to the bench in 2017, challenged the argument of the White House that it had banned the journalists because they had endangered national security, noting that the stories to which administration lawyers claimed to object were “routine.” In fact, one of the stories the White House claimed endangered national security was based on a press call from the White House itself. According to Oliver Darcy, who writes the media newsletter Status, the anonymous “senior administration official” who provided the quotations on the call was none other than Vice President J.D. Vance.

Kelly ordered the credentials of 78 journalists restored immediately.

This morning, the White House continued to deny reporters from CNN, Politico, and MS NOW access to the White House campus. Their lawyers asked for an emergency hearing because the administration had “already repeatedly violated the Court’s Order,” and soon after the judge ordered the administration to respond, the reporters were once again allowed into the area.

And then tonight, at least CNN and MS NOW were blocked from access to the White House state dinner with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. After Trump posted on social media that CNN and MS NOW (he called it MSDNC) were refusing to cover Xi’s visit “because they knew how good it would be, they didn’t want credit to be given to ‘TRUMP,’” the White House told CNN it could send only an audio producer and a cameraman to the event, not a reporter or producer. Senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes said: “They again said that we were specifically denied access and that they were not letting in the CNN editorial presence.”

This morning, Trump complained on social media that “[t]he Media is trying to cover up how well things are going before the Midterms, just to help Democrats.”

And that’s the gist of Trump’s attacks on media outlets: MAGA is falling apart, and he either lives in a fantasy world or hopes to stem that collapse by issuing propaganda that will convince voters he is actually winning.

The fantasy world thesis has supporting evidence in an image posted on Trump’s social media account this morning, showing Trump and Xi standing together on a red carpet in front of an airplane apparently labeled Air China. There is a military aircraft flying over a circle of stars with the words “Only Trump” superimposed in a German-style blackletter font. Behind Trump, to his right, is a young woman who looks like Trump’s loyal aide Natalie Harp standing with her hand over her heart.

Journalist Aaron Rupar of Public Notice noted that the image was a digitally altered photo in which the image of the chief officer of protocol of the United States, Monica Crowley, had been replaced by an image that appears to be Harp.

Convincing voters he is winning is an even harder sell.

The Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration is its signature policy, and last week a federal appeals court stopped the Trump administration from sending migrants to third countries, finding that the short timeline for those renditions stripped deportees of their right to due process. The administration appears to have continued the renditions, arguing that the court had not officially notified a lower court of its decision and thus it was not yet in effect, prompting an appeals court to clarify that the flights must stop.

Today Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the Supreme Court to step in to permit those renditions to third countries. He said that disruption of the administration’s “plans…imposes massive costs on the government and invariably requires new rounds of diplomatic engagement with countries who may be all the more skeptical of our removal efforts given the disruption.”

Also today, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for ignoring his previous orders and continuing to hold people in “inhumane and unconstitutional” conditions at Manhattan’s 26 Federal Plaza, depriving detainees of “sleep, sanitary living conditions, basic personal hygiene needs, sufficient food and water, and adequate medical care.” Although, as Josephine Walker of Axios points out, the administration likely sees the appalling conditions of its prisons as a way to induce migrants to leave, the judge required ICE to provide adequate space and humane conditions for detainees.

Meanwhile, as Ryan J. Foley of the Associated Press reported today, a report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that ICE had no strategic plan for spending the unprecedented $45 billion Congress gave it in Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year, and has wasted tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on slapdash plans for mass detention.

It spent nearly $3 million for tents at Guantanamo Bay that were never used, $20 million for maintaining warehouses that were never used to house detainees and are now being sold, and excessive rates to lock people up. Foley reports that the Department of Homeland Security told the GAO that it would have a plan for spending its windfall by August 31, 2027, nearly a year from now.

After Trump announced the U.S. would accept meat from other countries in order to lower food prices, on September 22 the Department of Agriculture announced the recall of more than 167,000 pounds (75,750 kg) of raw pork, beef, and goat. The items were produced without federal inspection but carried false marks claiming they had been inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The agency said the food “should be considered misbranded and unsafe to eat.”

Trump’s insistence that the country suffers from voter fraud isn’t going well, either.

In California, Republican sheriff Chad Bianco and the Riverside County sheriff’s department confiscated more than 650,000 ballots after California voters agreed to redistrict the state to offset the Republican mid-decade redistricting of Texas. The state’s Democratic attorney general immediately ordered him to return the ballots, saying he had no authority to confiscate them and that the seizure was intended to make people distrust elections.

As Uwa Ede-Osifo of the Guardian reported, the California Supreme Court today ordered Blanco to return the ballots, saying that it was Blanco, rather than voters, who was endangering elections: “Allowing law enforcement unfettered access to ballots, or the ability to handle and count them in secret, based on unregulated protocols, itself creates a substantial risk to election integrity,” it said.

On Saturday, California governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill that makes it a felony to seize ballots from a county elections office.

Trump’s own claims of voter fraud also took a hit this week. As Nick Corasaniti of the New York Times reported today, in July, Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin claimed they had found more than 270,000 noncitizens on voter rolls in California, Nevada, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Mullin stated that there were as many as 15,903 noncitizens on the voter rolls in Nevada.

But when officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) met with Nevada election officials in August, they admitted Mullin’s number was inflated. After the meeting, one wrote to say that the department had confirmed just 185 people on the voter rolls were not citizens. They sent Nevada officials a list of those 185 names.

On Tuesday, Nevada told the federal government that the 185 people on the government’s list are all citizens. “Our records do not support DHS’s claims, and DHS has still not provided evidence to change that,” said Francisco Aguilar, Nevada’s Democratic secretary of state. “Instead, DHS officials continue their attempts to intimidate election officials into compliance and deter voters with huge claims of fraud with no evidence. Repeating unsupported claims does not make them true.”

Trump’s job approval rating continues to drop. Fifty Plus One aggregated new polls today and found that only 34.7% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the presidency, while 62.1% disapprove.

Meridith McGraw, Maggie Severns, and Suzanne Vranica of the Wall Street Journal reported today that an ad airing in major U.S. markets shows Trump promising to “defeat communism, Marxism in America once and for all,” before showing images of Trump at White House events as a choir sings “Love Me.” At the end of the ad, the screen reads: “Paid for by the U.S. government.”

Former campaign finance official Daniel Weiner called the ad “an astonishing misuse of public resources in the campaign context, one of the most blatant I’ve ever seen.” Democratic lawmakers wrote to the White House demanding the ad be taken down, calling it “government propaganda” more fitting for North Korea than the U.S. and “an egregious and illegal misuse of Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars.”

According to the Wall Street Journal reporters, the White House says the ad is a “public service announcement,” “reminding Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders, and abroad.”

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fraud, Lies, Trump
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